Dear truck-fixer bloke,While we are all aware of your obsession with big, noisy engines and driving fast, the fact you were caught doing over 40 mph in the 30 mph limit zone past the high school is not an injustice, you would have been wrong to swerve into the policeman who caught you speeding and I'd like you to stop sulking about it and shut up about it now, please.The recent death of your father is not an excuse for feeling aggrieved that your life-threatening misbehaviour was documented. If anything, it should have made you more aware of the potential impact of you ignoring a speed limit that was put there for people's safety.

Me: *boots up computer*Windows 10: "Oh hi there, you look like you're trying to do something! Could you go ahead any maybe not do that for about 15 minutes so I can install updates? Cheers!"Me: [15 minutes later] "About damn time, let me run this two-hour video capture now."Windows 10: [an hour and a half later] "LOL JK gotta run more updates. Rebooting now! Haha you lost the last hour and a half of work."

Ultimate Outsider: Using GWX Control Panel to Permanently Remove ...blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-to-permanently-remove.html

30 Aug 2015 - This is the official user guide and announcement page for GWX Control Panel, the easiest way for users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to protect their computers from Windows 10. With GWX Control Panel you can: Remove the "Get Windows 10" icon that appears in your notification area, prevent your ...

K-R wrote:Me: *boots up computer*Windows 10: "Oh hi there, you look like you're trying to do something! Could you go ahead any maybe not do that for about 15 minutes so I can install updates? Cheers!"Me: [15 minutes later] "About damn time, let me run this two-hour video capture now."Windows 10: [an hour and a half later] "LOL JK gotta run more updates. Rebooting now! Haha you lost the last hour and a half of work."

This isn't the first time this has happened.

I'm still baffled nobody at Windows said "Um, guys? Wouldn't it make sense to ask for user permission before rebooting the computer for updates and disintegrating unsaved data they might have?" during the development of Windows 10. Rebooting computers like that should be classified as a felony.

i'm baffled that so many users seem to just accept that. i mean, some buy a new computer with 10 pre-installed and don't know how to downgrade, ok. but others actually "up"grade a perfectly working win7 system!!

K-R wrote:Me: *boots up computer*Windows 10: "Oh hi there, you look like you're trying to do something! Could you go ahead any maybe not do that for about 15 minutes so I can install updates? Cheers!"Me: [15 minutes later] "About damn time, let me run this two-hour video capture now."Windows 10: [an hour and a half later] "LOL JK gotta run more updates. Rebooting now! Haha you lost the last hour and a half of work."

This isn't the first time this has happened.

I'm still baffled nobody at Windows said "Um, guys? Wouldn't it make sense to ask for user permission before rebooting the computer for updates and disintegrating unsaved data they might have?" during the development of Windows 10. Rebooting computers like that should be classified as a felony.

I've found that you can actually override the automatic installation of updates using the Group Policy Editor. My computers both have the Win10 Pro version, so I don't know if this will work with other versions. Also, you need admin rights, so if this is a work computer it won't help.

Run "gpedit", and navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update. Find the setting "Configure Automatic Updates" and double-click. If you click the "Enabled" radio button and change the dropdown to "3 - Auto download and notify for install" you can choose to install or not. It will still harass you to do it, and after a week will start popping up an obnoxious full screen banner that you can dismiss, but you won't end up with a ticking time bomb waiting to blow up all the work you have open.

On my Surface, I use "2 - Notify for download and auto-install" since I was at my parents on their satellite internet and Windows Fucking Update took it upon itself to use nearly an entire month's worth of data to install an update that really could have waited. (I know about "Metered Connection", but it's opaque whether it's configured or not when you're on a non-admin account, and I forgot to turn it on for that connection.) At home, my desktop is plugged into my router and I don't care about data usage, nor will I ever haul it to somewhere that I will care about data usage.

One other downside is that it will wait for you to approve every update, even the Windows Defender ones that never need a restart, and those things come out about every other day, or even more frequently. Windows Update basically operates on the "pissy passive-aggressive girlfriend" model, where if you don't give it carte-blanche permission to do whatever it wants it sulks and pesters you for permission to do obviously non-harmful things.

There's another setting "No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates" but I'm not confident I understand all of the criteria it uses, and simply stopping the update installation is friendlier to me, since if there's a known bad update I can prevent it from installing.

Damn this weather. I seem to have received all the problems/delays/cancellation/etc, due to the bursts of cold/wind/snow, whilst hardly seeing any of the weather itself. Most recently, a scout nighthiking/camping event I've been particularly looking forward to, and booked trains to, has been cancelled with 24 hours to go. That's £23 on train tickets unusable (not a negligible amount on a student budget), non-refundable, changing them to another date costs another £10... I don't think I would mind so much if I had actually had any good snow to look at/walk in/admire, but I've been in the wrong part of the country every single time this winter; anything that falls here melts immediately. Even London got snow last month, one of the warmest parts of the UK, as the city's heat usually prevents any there. Whilst I got nowt. Maybe I should move to Wales, they usually get good snow... oh wait, that's where I am.Sunday's predicted fall might settle, but I don't have high hopes.

Gobshite know-it-all arsehole co-worker: "Dan's making progress with his misses. You can tellbecause now if you go like that towards her she flinches, so he's obviously been setting her straight."Dan the convicted drug-dealer: "It's not a beating. It's education."

Either way, I'd like to hit him in the mouth for talking that way, but if he's serious I ought to use a crowbar. Now, how do I find out whether he's serious?

sitting in a restaurant close to the door and some filthy ash hole is visible out the window smoking at a patio table as close to door as i am.

asked two waitresses to ask them to stop in lieu of going out and giving them shit for it myself. trying to be nicer about these things. neither of them do anything about it. guess it’s back to screaming at people in public since that’s the only thing short of well-deserved but unfortunately illegal violence that actually gets justice done.

I couldn't because it was so crowded in there, but even if I could it's besides the point. I shouldn't have to walk through their cloud of smoke on my way out either, they just shouldn't be doing the first place, and they need to know not to do it in the future so fuckers don't ruin my favorite restaurant. Thankfully they left well before I did, soon after I posted that, but the rant remains.

Not round here, they're not. Smokers huddle in the pub doorway and smoke "outside" without going out into the wind and rain, so there's no clean way in or out, or they walk along the (pavement / sidewalk)* with a lit cigarette, not even smoking it, just trailing toxic fumes everywhere.

Then you get the guys who think vaping doesn't count so they can do it everywhere, including in reception, in vehicles, in restaurants, in the canteen, ...

Here we have carriageway and pavement. In the US they have ... pavement and sidewalk? Sometimes we have a footway.

Maybe we should all start calling them carriageway and sidewalk. Then we'd know wtf we meant, y'know?

In the US, pavement is the substance laid down on the ground (asphalt or concrete), not any particular kind of path thus covered. The walking path on the side of the road is the sidewalk, and the driving path down the middle is just the road.

So I figured it was summer enough to shut the heating down, which is a complicated process consisting of 1) turning a knob to the off position and 2)flipping a switch. Only step 1 isn't as straightforward, because some genius involved in making this furnace placed a small metal cover around the knob on the gas valve, obscuring the already hardly visible mark telling you which position the knob is in. Now where's my permanent marker...

I got a new Blu-ray DVD today. I put it in the drive and the computer recognised it and offered to play it. Yay, right?

Then the player said it needed updating. My habitual answer to this kind of thing is: "No you don't. You've played Blu-ray discs before. You can play one now. Play it." That didn't work. It booted up Google Chrome to give me the installer. O.....kay. Installer then said it couldn't install anything because the software was already running. Fine, I'll close it for you. I closed it and tried again and got the same message. Cancel install, try again. Works fine. Now try to make the computer play that disc. Umm ... ah, Windows Explorer has stopped working ... again. Give it a few days and it'll realise there isn't a solution to this problem and restart it. Right. Colour scheme has been changed to Basic because something can't handle custom schemes? REALLY? Whatever! Play the disc. No? Alright, I'll take it out and put it back in again. The player said it needed updating. Sure, go right ahead. Oh, complete is it? Great. Now play the disc. "Resume or restart?" Well, if you already played something I missed it, so restart. "Loading disc." The player said it needed updating. Sure, go right ahead. Oh, complete is it? Great. Now play the disc. "Resume or restart?" Well, if you already played something I missed it, so restart. "Loading disc." The player said it needed updating. Sure, go right ahead. Oh, complete is it? Great. Now play the disc. "Resume or restart?" Alright, this time I'll try resume. Nothing? Nothing. FFS, just play the disc, can't you? How hard can it be? You are driver software for a blue-ray drive. Your sole purpose in existence is to play the fucking disc. Quit fucking me around, shut the fuck up about updates, stop loading the disc and PLAY the disc. Play the motherfucking disc. Just play the disc.

I wonder whether taking the disc out of the drive, taking the drive out of the computer, smashing the drive into pieces with a 2 lb hammer and sending the pieces to the manufacturer would make it work better.

Turns out the latest driver update and the downloaded patch look nothing like each other, and now my product is an expired trial version rather than a registered version and there's no way to register it, so to continue using this drive I have to pay them £60 for a new drive. They're happy to sell me the software without the drive, so I can get it today for the full price of a new drive with the software.

So I want to connect my tv to WiFi. I don't have the original remote, but my cable remote works with the tv. Except, it doesn't seem to realize that navigation arrows and 'select' are things a tv would need. No matter what I try, pressing those buttons registers as a command to the cable box instead of the tv.

Fine, I'll use the awkward built in menu navigation buttons on the side of the tv itself. Network, wireless, there's my network, enter the password. Kind of annoying with these buttons and an onscreen keyboard, but fine. Okay, done. Wait... where's the 'enter' key on this onscreen keyboard? Oh, there it is at the bottom of the screen next to a green box. But I can't get to it. The cursor just wraps back to the top. There isn't actually an enter key at all, just an indication of which button on the remote means enter for this menu.

These motherfuckers went to the trouble of making an onscreen keyboard and didn't include the fucking enter key, so it's impossible to finish the setup without a remote. Google shows me one result of someone with my exact problem, and his question is listed as having been solved. The solution: "buy a remote". Fuck whoever tagged that question as solved.